


Deoch-An-Doris

by ThrillingDetectiveTales



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, M/M, Moneypenny is human but she's still scarier than both of them combined, Vampire!Q, werewolf!bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 13:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30140400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales
Summary: “Do you understand what it is, precisely, that you’re offering?”Bond smirked, eyes narrow with humor. “A nightcap,” he supplied, and then added wryly, “after a fashion.”Q snorted, eyes sparkling, but there was a dark edge of menace under his light tone as he warned, “If you’re expecting it to be all fun and games, I’m afraid you’ve been watching far too much biter porn. Do you know how long it takes to bleed out from an unattended wound to the jugular vein?”Bond opened his mouth to provide an appropriately pithy response referencing the mandatory training in basic field medicine he’d undergone during his tenure with the Royal Navy, but Q cut him off.“Five minutes,” he supplied, brisk but casual, like he was reprimanding a tiresome junior agent in the middle of any standard agency debriefing, “at an optimistic maximum. Sever the carotid, and you’re looking at potential seconds. Even werewolves don’t heal fast enough to repair that kind of damage.”
Relationships: James Bond & Eve Moneypenny, James Bond/Q
Comments: 5
Kudos: 72





	Deoch-An-Doris

**Author's Note:**

> Immeasurable thanks to the lovely [**christinefromsherwood**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/christinefromsherwood) for giving this a beta-read. I took many of her suggestions to make this piece better, and she had much more excellent advice that I would have taken if I had the time or inclination to do further editing to this piece, but I've been sitting on it for months and months now and I honestly just don't see that happening. I like enough of what I have to feel it's worth a share, anyway, and I hope that some of y'all out there might enjoy it too. Lingering mistakes are 100% mine.
> 
> I did quite a bit of research into several different subjects for this one, but as I'm an artist by trade and not a medical professional or a scientist, be prepared to handwave some details.
> 
> For reference a "deoch-an-doris," according to the internet, is a last drink provided to a guest before they head home. The English equivalent being something like "one for the road," or perhaps a "walk me down," if you're a fan of NADDPod. It seemed a fitting title for reasons that will (hopefully) become clear.
> 
> Enjoy!

Bond received the summons just after midnight—a simple text message set to the unassuming trill of MI6’s emergency ringtone that read:

_Mum expects you home by 0100. Sis called, she needs a ride._

It took Bond, who had been lost to the depths of slumber for once, a moment to decipher. ‘Mum’ was obviously M and ‘0100’ was the relevant call time. ‘Sis’ could be any number of people or objects or other assets, and ‘needs a ride’ suggested some sort of retrieval or extraction.

 _Where is she?_ he texted in response, fingers stiff and clumsy even on the sleek touchscreen. He had to correct three typos before it was ready to send. The reply chirped through a split second later.

 _Mark and Enid’s. The party got a little out of hand. She’s pretty spooked, decided to leave early._

‘Mark and Enid’s’ Bond translated to ‘M.E.,’ meaning the subject in question was somewhere in the Middle East, and likely in imminent danger, judging by the rest of the contents, though he was too groggy to tease out the details in the code. There’d be time for that later.

He sighed, scrubbed his hand over his face, and reached over to discover the sheets beside him still rumpled, but cool and long empty. He grunted, displeased but not surprised, and rolled out of bed to pad his way into the bathroom, where he allowed himself the luxury of standing motionless under the heated spray from his showerhead for a full fifteen minutes before scrubbing himself free of the lingering scents of sex and sweat and preparing to head into the office. The roads were sparsely populated but not yet empty—they rarely were, in a city the size of London, even during the smallest hours of morning—and he made better time than he expected. This was something of a disappointment, as Bond had gone to great lengths to establish a near pathological aversion to punctuality as one of his more defining character traits.

He considered parking down the block, just to waste another five minutes and put himself properly within the realm of fashionable tardiness, but didn’t trust the general populace to show the Aston the appropriate deference when he wasn’t there to look after her. Instead, he left her on one of the lower levels in the employee garage, double-parked over the line between two compact spaces, mostly just to be a nuisance but also as a pointed statement on what would happen if he returned to find her in any way compromised.

He took the lift up to the floor that housed M’s office, straightening his tie and tugging the sleeve of his jacket into place as the doors dinged open. The floor was empty but for a couple of overnight analysts, monitoring real time data from countries whose daytime activity took place while most of London was tucked safely away in bed. 

There was a column of yellow light spilling out from a doorway across the floor. Bond followed it into a conference room off to the left of M’s office proper, where Gareth Mallory—who would never quite be ‘M’ in Bond’s mind despite rising admirably to the responsibilities foisted upon him by the untimely passing of his predecessor—was clustered at the head of a long wooden table with Bill Tanner and Eve Moneypenny. They had their heads bent together over a series of grainy black-and-white surveillance shots, and appeared to be arguing the merits of one method of ingress over another.

“ - would have to be a tandem jump,” Tanner was saying.

Moneypenny scoffed. “Surely they could manage to pull a ripcord.”

“It’s disposing of the ‘chute upon landing that’s the issue.” Tanner waggled his fingers in the air. “Need a set of human hands to contend with those fiddly little buckles.”

“Quick release lever,” Moneypenney suggested.

“Still have to get out of the risers. And God forbid one of them winds up caught in the local foliage. They’d hang themselves before they tore free.” Tanner shook his head, decisive. “No, it would have to be tandem.”

“No one on staff would be fool enough to buddy jump a double-oh.”

“Precisely my point.” Tanner leaned in and rapped his middle finger sharply against one of the photographs. “That’s why the farm is our best bet. It’s only about fifteen miles out from the target and our sources confirm it’s been defunct for decades. Plenty of barren fields to serve as a landing pad and no nosy neighbors to alert the Chacal Doré _or_ local law enforcement.”

“I still think - ”

“Ah,” Mallory interrupted when he noticed Bond loitering in the doorway. He straightened up while Tanner and Moneypenny lapsed into polite silence. “OO7. Good of you to finally join us.” He had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a button undone at his collar, his tie long since misplaced. He was in the same shirt he’d been wearing when Bond had dropped off an after action report that morning, suggesting that he hadn’t been home in the interim. Likely none of the executive staff had been, if the situation was particularly dire.

Bond made a show of rolling his wrist and peering into the gleaming face of his Omega Seamaster. “It’s barely gone half past.”

“And yet,” Mallory continued, dropping into the leather swivel chair at the head of the conference table with his palms spread wide, “OO5 was here fifteen minutes ago and has already been debriefed and sent down to Q Branch for outfitting.”

Tanner and Moneypenny followed his cue, taking a seat on either side of him, while Bond angled his body toward the door at his back and hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

“Suppose I’ll be off to bed, in that case?” he asked, flashing his most charming grin.

Moneypenny ducked her head against a smirk while Tanner rolled his eyes with a fondness he couldn’t quite disguise. Mallory heaved a sigh through his nose and waved Bond forward.

“Have a seat, OO7,” he instructed, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Bond circled around the table on Moneypenny’s side, unbuttoned his jacket with a lazy flick of his wrist, and dropped into the chair next to her with all the easy elegance of a big cat. He flashed her a small smile, rested an elbow against the tabletop, and leaned in to get a view of the surveillance footage strewn across the surface. It was a series of photos featuring a concrete building, squat and square with no real windows to speak of, set against a backdrop of rocky hills and flat scrubland. Syria, maybe, or somewhere thereabouts.

“An hour and a half ago we received an emergency transmission from Zahra Mathis, a junior agent tasked with infiltrating the Chacal Doré, a drugs ring out of Lebanon,” Mallory explained. “She claimed that her cover had been compromised and requested immediate extraction. We’ve been unable to contact her directly since then, but the last tracker coordinates we picked up before she went dark put her roughly forty miles north of Ras Baalbek, likely somewhere in the compound pictured here.”

Bond reached out and pinned one of the photographs with the pads of his fingers, sliding it over and giving it a long, hard look. The structure itself didn’t appear particularly difficult to infiltrate. The doors were big and bold at the front of the building, easy enough to slip through, assuming one could make it past the steady rotation of guardsmen carting automatic weapons at their belts like any number of half-cocked American action movie protagonists. Getting out would prove trickier, but was still a task that any double-oh agent worth their salt ought to be able to accomplish.

“With all due respect, sir,” Bond said, giving the photograph a gentle shove to send it spinning back into the pile, “sending two double-ohs to perform a simple extraction seems excessive.”

Mallory brought his hands up in front of his face, steepling his fingers and studying Bond over his knuckles for a long, silent moment while he worked his jaw. Eventually, he sighed again, and admitted, “OO5 was only recently promoted, following the loss of his predecessor in Da Nang.”

Bond inclined his head to show that he remembered. He’d skipped the funeral in favor of sharing a commemorative whisky flight with double-ohs 4 and 13, which he felt the preceding OO5 would have found in far better taste.

“While he has conducted himself admirably thus far, OO5 has never undertaken a mission of this particular nature. We haven’t been forced to implement one in quite some time.” Mallory raised his eyebrows and fixed Bond with a speaking look.

“Ah,” Bond said, understanding rolling through him in a warm, smug wave. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach, stretching his legs out under the table and crossing them casually at the ankles. “You need a wolf.”

“The part of the compound you see here is only the tip of the iceberg,” Mallory continued, as though Bond hadn’t spoken, which was confirmation enough. “It runs for miles underground and the damned thing is a virtual rabbit warren of unmapped corridors and dead ends. CCTV only extends throughout the main building and down a handful of hallways along the topmost sublayer.”

Bond put his head to one side, knowing what the likely answer would be even as he asked, “Do we have any idea where she is?”

Mallory shook his head, sharp and rueful. “Not as yet, though I am assured that Q Branch is working tirelessly to get us a better read. In the meantime, well.” He reached up to tap the side of his nose, his smile a small, secretive sliver in his otherwise stoic face. “The nose knows, as they say.”

Bond heaved a slow, measured breath. “We’re not bloodhounds. Depending on what they’ve got stashed down there, we might not be able to pick up her scent at all.”

“I like your chances better than mine,” Mallory replied, which was true enough that Bond couldn’t argue. Mallory tugged a black mission folder out from under the photographs and various analyst overviews and slid it over to Bond, who eyed it warily for a moment before flicking it open with a finger.

Inside was a half-sheet print of a pretty girl with dark hair and hooded eyes under thick, arched brows, paperclipped to an information sheet that listed out various confirmed members of the Chacal Doré, next to blurry two-inch thumbnail portraits. It was a modest outfit, with only forty or fifty members amongst its ranks, but it turned lucrative enough profits peddling marijuana and other fairly benign recreational substances through Australia that Bond had no trouble believing every one of them would happily go down fighting to protect their investment.

“Why two of us?” he pressed, without bothering to lift his head. He let his lip curl with something just a shade too sharp to be a smirk and flipped to the other side of the info sheet, scanning the projections the analytics team had provided to theorize what the infiltrating agents might expect as they delved further into the compound. “Don’t tell me you’ve started buying into that ‘pack hunter’ bollocks.”

“Nothing so flagrantly misguided, I assure you,” Mallory said, sounding halfway to a laugh. It was common knowledge that while Bond would occasionally condescend to play nice when necessity demanded his cooperation in the matter, he much preferred to work alone, the quartermaster in his ear notwithstanding. “OO5 is a bitten wolf, and while he contracted the condition when he was fairly young, he’s less comfortable with overriding his instinctual stress responses than I would prefer in a field agent. I’m hoping that your presence might help temper him.”

“You’ve got me _babysitting,”_ Bond scoffed, injecting the word with as much vitriol as he could summon. It made a certain amount of sense, considering that Bond was about as pedigreed a born wolf as they came, able to trace his patriarchal lineage back to the gall óglaigh of mid-13th century Scotland, but remained a galling prospect nonetheless. He flipped the folder shut and turned to glare his displeasure at Mallory, who didn’t seem phased in the least.

“I have you assessing the performance of a fellow double-oh agent and offering insight you are uniquely positioned to provide.”

“Semantics,” Bond muttered. “Tell me you at least plan to leave us twenty quid for pizza.”

Beside him, Moneypenny snorted.

“I understand that it’s a bit early yet in the lunar cycle to accommodate a comfortable shift,” Mallory said, ignoring Bond’s sarcastic aside and rising to his feet with commensurate dignity. “As such, you’ll be shifting well ahead of the entry point and maintaining form until you encounter Agent Mathis, upon which one of you may tuck tail long enough to convey the plan of action before escorting her out. And OO7?”

Bond arched a single, attentive eyebrow.

“Should OO5 succumb to his bestial nature and put yourself or Agent Mathis at unnecessary risk, I trust you know what to do.”

Bond smiled, wide and white and vicious, teeth no less dangerous for all that they were currently blunt and human. “Yes, sir.”

Mallory nodded, short and sharp, and took his leave, crooking two fingers in Tanner’s direction as he went. The Chief of Staff scurried off behind him, sparing a quick, amiable nod for Bond, while Moneypenny leaned in and started shuffling the documents into a pile. 

When Bond failed to follow suit and instead remained seated, swiveling lazily back and forth, Moneypenny cut him a sly look out of the corner of her eye. 

“Shouldn’t you be scuttling along to Q Branch?”

“In due time,” Bond assured her, with a conspiratorial grin. “I’ve a favor to ask first, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Moneypenny sighed and pushed herself to her feet, settling the stack of documents against her hip and peering down at Bond with her dark eyes narrow and gleaming. “With you,” she drawled, “it’s _always_ trouble.”

Bond clapped a hand to his chest. “You wound me.”

“I am told I have a rather cutting tongue,” Moneypenny agreed, and sashayed around him and back out to the little lobby, where her desk was tucked against the far wall. Bond rose, buttoning his jacket, and sauntered along in her wake.

He waited quietly with his hands in his trouser pockets while she slipped the majority of the documents into a manila envelope and tucked them away in the top drawer of a shoulder-high filing cabinet. She turned around to proffer the mission folder with one hand and splayed the other flat against her desktop, leaning forward as she grinned, “I believe this belongs to you.”

Bond took it, inclining his head to express his gratitude, and smiled as Moneypenny straightened up and crossed her arms over her chest.

“All right,” she said, tilting her chin up. “What do you need?”

“Information.”

“What kind of information?”

“Nothing particularly salacious.”

Moneypenny arched a single, imperious eyebrow and pursed her mouth around a smirk. “Perish the thought,” she said, in the exceedingly saccharine tone that she used when she wanted to make it clear that she meant to imply the exact opposite of what she was actually saying. She lifted a hand and rolled it through the air a couple of times, impatient. “Get on with it, then.”

“You go out for drinks once a month, with Tanner and the other executives.” Including, Bond didn’t bother to specify, their esteemed quartermaster.

“Barring any unexpected errands on behalf of Queen and country, yes,” Moneypenny confirmed with a little nod.

Bond mirrored the gesture and reached out to fiddle with a ceramic figurine on the corner of Moneypenny’s desk. “What does he order?”

Moneypenny blinked, then frowned, perfectly aware as to whom he was referring. “Why do you want to know?”

Bond lifted one shoulder in a shrug and flashed her an unconcerned smile, small and close-mouthed, without any further response.

She watched him for a long moment and offered slowly, “If you’re looking to surprise him, you could just try showing up on time for once. Maybe return a piece of equipment in passable working order every now and again.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Bond let his grin curl high enough to carve dimples into the planes of his cheeks, and was rewarded when Moneypenny rolled her eyes and huffed a soft gust of a laugh through her nose.

“It’s going to cost you,” she warned.

“There are very few prices I wouldn’t pay.”

It was more of an admission than Bond had meant to let slip, and something in Moneypenny’s gaze softened and warmed, like a caramel left too long in the sun.

“He drinks wine, mostly,” she announced, at the same crisp clip she used to hold court during meetings. “Plasma-fortified. Red and white both, though he has a fondness for dessert wines that he’ll deny to his last breath. He’ll have a pint, every now and again, but it turns his stomach if he drinks too much, so he doesn’t prefer it. Blood, sometimes, when they’ve got it on tap, which is rare. Donor certified, of course.”

“Any particular type?”

Moneypenny shook her head. “He’s not picky about that. Apparently they blend the bottled stuff so thoroughly you can’t taste the antigens, and everything else gets filtered out per FSA regulations.”

“What about living blood?”

“Living blood,” Moneypenny echoed, eyebrows vaulting toward her hairline in an uncharacteristically open expression of shock. “He doesn’t talk about that. Not with me, not in public. No vampire does, nowadays, unless they want to get slapped with a fine and dragged in for a probationary hearing with the Council for Ethical Blood Consumption.”

“It’s _never_ come up,” Bond ventured, letting his disbelief ring through his tone. “Not once, in all the years you’ve known him?”

Moneypenny tightened her jaw, nostrils flaring, and Bond cursed himself for allowing his curiosity to supersede his usual, razor-honed charm. Of course Moneypenny would go to bat on Q’s behalf—they may as well have been siblings, for all their unshakeable loyalty and mutual love of taking the piss, and she wasn’t about to suffer anyone speaking ill of the quartermaster without putting up a fight.

She tilted her chin up, glowering at Bond down her nose as she said, “Even if it had, I would hardly barter such privileged information with a double-oh agent who can’t even be bothered to make a token attempt at subtlety when he’s digging into his superiors’ personal business.” Moneypenny gathered up the papers in her outbox and leveled the stack against the desk with quick, irritable twists of her hands, presumably to give herself something to do that wasn’t reaching over to pop Bond in the jaw. “Frankly, OO7, I’m surprised at you,” she continued, admonishing, as she slung the papers back into the tray, where they promptly slipped into disarray once more. “You, of all people, should know better than to ask a question like that. If anybody heard you -

“I’m not looking to entrap our quartermaster.”

Moneypenny stared at him, silence lapping between them in thick, frigid waves as her dark eyes traversed the contours of Bond’s face. 

Bond kept his posture loose and open, as reassuring as he knew how to be when everything about him screamed ‘predator’ at a decibel he could scarcely control. After a few moments’ close, careful consideration, Moneypenny’s gaze narrowed, glittering and suspicious, while glee unfurled across her features in a slow, syrupy sprawl.

“Why, James,” she purred, leaning forward onto her hands, “you’re not thinking of offering him a drink, are you?”

This, Bond considered, was precisely the trouble with having a social circle comprised almost entirely of trained espionage agents. Deciding that this particular avenue of inquiry was better off abandoned, he tapped the corner of the mission folder against the desk with another small, unassuming smile. “Goodnight, Miss Moneypenny.”

She let him go without comment beyond a dry warning to expect her bill for services rendered, but Bond could feel her eyes on his retreating back as he stepped into the lift. He assured himself that it was pragmatism rather than cowardice that kept his gaze tucked dutifully downward until the doors were safely closed.

His dalliance with the quartermaster was something of an open secret—Moneypenny almost certainly had an inkling, and if the new M was anything like his predecessor he’d been well aware for weeks and decided to spare himself the trouble of passing judgment either way—but they had taken pains to be discreet. Bond couldn’t imagine that Q would be best pleased to discover he’d been discussing their little arrangement, even obliquely. And he _would_ discover it. Moneypenny was as skilled at keeping secrets as any agent, if not moreso, but neither was she above a bit of good old fashioned gossip-mongering when it suited her.

There was only a skeleton crew and a few red-eyed brownnosers left monitoring their stations in Q Branch when Bond came strolling onto the R&D floor where the quartermaster preferred to spend his time. It was five after the hour by now, but he considered the delay well worth the ire he was no doubt courting, even if his botched interrogation hadn’t yielded anything fruitful.

Besides, he always had enjoyed making an entrance.

A few of the boffins looked up when he passed by, though their attention didn’t linger long. They were wary of the double-ohs, and Bond in particular, but repeated exposure had dulled their instinctual panic response to the apex predator in their midst. Bond would have to take measures to correct that when he got back. It wouldn’t do to have the quartermaster’s minions disregarding him as a threat just because he liked to lounge around on his off-days and watch their boss in his element, and occasionally carted tins of plasma-fortified tea and other little trinkets back from exotic locales across the globe to ensure the quartermaster’s favor.

Q was posted up behind a standing table at the back of the room, preternaturally still but for the occasional sweep of his hand as he gestured to a piece of equipment before expounding on its various technical specifications and merits to the agent at attention across from him.

The newly promoted OO5 was tawny-haired and stocky and a few inches shorter than Bond, with a full beard just this side of ginger and a vaguely agrarian surname. Shepherd or Gardiner or something of that ilk. Between his heavy Devon accent and his propensity for worn denim and flannel workman’s shirts, the man could have been any anonymous bumpkin come up from the West Country for a visit, which was an exceptional cover, as those things went.

He was positively antsy in comparison to the quartermaster, with the way he shifted and huffed and drummed his fingers against his thighs, but blooded beings always tended to appear frenetic when measured alongside the so-called living dead. Even Bond, who considered himself a creature of consummate patience, would be hard-pressed to achieve the statuesque stillness characteristic of a vampire.

Bond took a breath through his mouth, savoring the scent of the quartermaster on his tongue—sweet with a thick spice, like someone had spilled a barrel of cinnamon over blossoming wisteria. It was cut through with the familiar, earthy animal tang that signified another wolf. The scent was faint, with OO5 wearing both his human skin and a not inconsiderable amount of pungent cologne, but still discernible over the simmering miasma of hot metal and plastic and astringent commercial cleaners that pervaded every inch of the Technical Services Section that Bond had ever ventured into.

“OO7,” Q greeted as Bond approached, pale eyes bright behind his glasses and one side of his red mouth curved up in a sharp smirk. “You’re late.”

“My apologies, Quartermaster,” Bond returned with a nod. He tossed the folder haphazardly onto the corner of the table, grinning when Q followed the motion with an irritated frown before looking back over with a languid, unimpressed blink. “You know how Miss Moneypenny tends to go on.”

Q hummed, a flat note that indicated he was in no mood to indulge Bond’s excuses, and then tilted his head toward the array of weapons and other gadgetry laid out across the table. “As I was just explaining to OO5 here, given the nature of your assignment, Q Branch has modified some standard equipment to better suit quadrupedal operators with limited vocalization capabilities.”

Bond smiled at him. “You can just say ‘werewolves.’” He offered a hand to OO5. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“Oh!” OO5 clapped his palm to Bond’s and gave it an eager shake, smile broad in his square face. “Russell Lamb. Just Russ, if you’d rather. Pleasure’s all mine.”

“Bond - ”

“James Bond, yes,” Q finished for him. “Your reputation undoubtedly precedes you as always, OO7, but we are on a bit of a schedule here. Gentlemen, if we could?” He gestured to the equipment and waited until both double-ohs were wearing identical expressions of placid attention to point out a narrow strap of butter soft leather with a blocky little metallic rectangle sewn into a pocket on one side. There was an antenna sticking up through a loop in the pocket, roughly two and a half centimeters high with a tiny ball at the top, and a sturdy steel buckle at the opposite end.

“Two-way satellite radio transmitter,” Q said. “Lower tech than you might be used to, but communications infrastructure in the arse-end of Lebanon leaves something to be desired. There’s no signal out there to piggyback off of so we’ll be generating our own.”

Bond hooked a finger through the buckle of the strap nearest him and lifted the whole contraption off the table. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Quartermaster, but this charming little doohickey appears rather like a collar.”

“Yes, OO7, thank you very much for that thorough analysis.” Q reached across the table to snatch it back and laid it out alongside its twin, smoothing both straps into place with a few swift passes of his long, elegant fingers. “I’m well aware of the stigma among wolves, and frankly I don’t care a whit whether you find it degrading, so long as it keeps you alive.”

Bond exchanged a speaking look with OO5, who appeared just as unenthused at the prospect of donning the unfortunate article as Bond himself. 

Q ignored them both, and flipped the collar over to illustrate a tiny protrusion a few centimeters shy of the buckle. “We’ve also taken the liberty of embedding a long-range tracker that gives off a stronger signal than your subdermal implants and Smart Blood combined. It pings every thirty-five seconds, and I’ll be able to pinpoint your location to a depth of a hundred and fifty meters.” He cut Bond a sharp look, amusement shading the corners of his mouth. “Presuming, of course, that you can manage to keep it intact for more than twenty minutes.”

“I think that depends largely on the competence of our opposition,” Bond offered, tucking his hands into the pockets of his trousers even as he leaned in for a better view.

The quartermaster sighed and gestured to a pair of what appeared to be silicone rings with big, blocky protrusions at the top. 

“Modified straight key,” Q explained. “It slips on over the index finger of your dominant hand, and you need only press your thumb to the button to close the circuit, which will register a pulse to the receiver here at Q Branch, whereupon it will be translated from Morse code to the Queen’s English courtesy a piece of heavily augmented ham radio freeware and the not inconsiderable talents of one of our very finest communications technicians.” Q nodded to a young man of Asian descent seated at a nearby computer station, who turned just in time to offer a wide smile and eager thumbs-up by way of reply.

“Bit antiquated, for Q Branch,” Bond observed.

“Considering you’ll be non-verbal for the majority of your deployment, it was the neatest solution we could come up with to ensure an avenue of communication that doesn’t require tucking tail. Stroke of luck that you both already happen to be fluent.” 

“How very thoughtful of you.”

“I should hate to deprive you of the opportunity to argue with your handlers at every turn, OO7. You might very well implode if forced to exercise that much restraint all at once.” Q ploughed ahead without waiting for a response, indicating a couple of black tactical vests that seemed somewhat longer than usual, with a more pronounced taper at the waist. “We’ve developed an ultra lightweight high-modulus polyethylene micro-weave. Resistant to impact as well as most acids and other corrosive materials, with a triple layer moisture wicking system in the side panels that encourages evaporative cooling to ensure you don’t overheat in the tunnels. The neoprene coating provides a small measure of insulation against electrical charges, for added insurance.”

“It’s a bloody bulletproof vest,” Bond sighed, only managing not to roll his eyes through judicious application of willpower.

“Is that really necessary?” OO5 asked, glancing between them. “I mean, silver’s about the only thing that can cause a wolf permanent damage, right? And the Chacal Doré don’t know we’re coming. I doubt they’ve been stockpiling silvered rounds.”

“Given that even impermanent damage could very well compromise your mission objective should you incur enough of it, we would prefer you avoid taking trauma to centre mass all the same,” Q said gently to OO5, before turning to Bond and arching an eyebrow. “I think you’ll find it considerably more comfortable than your garden variety aramid fiber micro-weave.”

Bond reached out and pinched the material between his thumb and forefinger. It was indeed far softer than he’d expected and cool to the touch besides, the thin layers slipping back and forth over one another with a slick slide not unlike silk. He nodded, pleased and surprised, and Q flashed him a satisfied smirk.

“Ear protection,” he continued, pointing out two pairs of plastic earmuffs, similar to the aviation headset a pilot might use, only more triangular in shape. “The internal speaker system outputs the broadcast from the radio transmitter, nothing special. There’s a wireless microphone embedded in the cushion of the right ear cup, though I don’t imagine you’ll have much call to use it. It’ll be piggybacking off the same satellite connection as your radios, no activation or other interaction required. Now, on to eye protection.” 

He held up a pair of flat, single-piece goggles that looked like something you might find in a ski shop. Proffering them to one side then the other, like a hostess on a gameshow, he bent them nearly in half before unfolding them again, unharmed. 

“Flexible, rubberized polyethylene chassis. The lenses are double layered graphene. Heat sensitive, with lithium ion battery backup to prevent condensation. The exterior is a zero distortion toric lens treated with a specialized coating that should filter incoming light particles without restricting visibility.” Q’s mouth curled, his pleasure with his department’s innovation obvious.

When neither double-oh reacted beyond blinking expectantly, he sighed, low and despairing, and clarified, “Think of it a bit like a two-way mirror. You can see out but the usual visual irritants can’t make their way in. We’ve attached pinhole cameras on either side of the frames, one infrared and one standard night vision. They’ll be transmitting data back to Q Branch as you go, allowing us to map the facility in real time and provide better guidance.”

It occurred to Bond belatedly that he had seen both the earmuffs and similar, though markedly less impressive, sets of tactical goggles on specially trained combat dogs during his time in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. It seemed the indignities were just heaping up.

“We’re not house pets.”

“No,” Q agreed, straightening up with his fingers splayed out against the table. He met Bond’s gaze, unapologetic and unflinching. His tone, when he spoke, was light and just on the proper side of playful. “If you were, I might have better luck training you to return my equipment in one piece.”

Bond allowed him the barest shard of an amused smirk and gestured expansively to the array of gear laid out between them. “And yet.”

“Distasteful as you may find the concept, OO7, the truth of the matter is that there are certain instances when your physiology is similar enough to that of canis lupus familiaris to make adopting existing technologies developed with dogs in mind the safest and most efficient choice.” Q met Bond’s gaze and put his head to one side. He wasn’t smiling, but Bond could tell from the gleam in his eye that he was enjoying the repartee. “If the severest injury you incur during the course of this assignment is a slight to your pride, I shall consider it an unparalleled success. Now, be a good boy, won’t you? And let me finish.”

Bond snorted and bared his teeth, just a flash, quick enough that it could have been a smile or a sneer, and fell silent. OO5 was glancing unsubtly between them, looking for all the world like he wanted to pipe up on Bond’s behalf but was unwilling to risk the Quartermaster’s wrath. Wise man, really. Q could be remarkably petty when he felt he was being disrespected. It had taken Bond months of stumbling into the other man’s well-disguised sore spots and then paying appropriate penance—often in the form of persistent catastrophic technical failures during what was supposed to be his downtime—to establish the rhythm they had now.

“Last but not least, we have time-release explosives,” Q announced, gesturing to a couple of bandoliers loaded up with a series of matte black discs that appeared to be made of brushed plastic or a similar hard substrate. He slipped one free and held it up to illustrate the size and shape—about half the width of his palm across and thirty centimeters or so deep at the highest point of its shallow, domed curvature. “Should you find yourselves in need of a little extra firepower, simply remove a disc and depress it like so.” He clicked the top of the little disc with his thumb to demonstrate. It sank down so the whole structure flattened out, and a tiny green light began flashing on one side. “You should be able to manage that much, even with limited digital mobility.”

At precisely the same moment, a counter leapt into existence on the screen in the top right hand corner of the massive display at the back of the room, glaring red numbers rolling down from 00:45.

“You’ll have approximately forty-five seconds to remove yourself from the blast radius. The incendiary compound in the discs is an in-house modification of the standard PE-4 recipe, intended to produce a more tightly contained chemical reaction. So long as you don’t double up, thirty feet of distance should suffice, and you won’t have to worry about bringing the tunnel down on top of you. The casing is a carbon fiber polymer designed to vaporize upon detonation, thereby reducing the risk of shrapnel damage. Even so, as with any explosives, I hazard caution when employing them, particularly within an enclosed space.” He depressed the detonator again and the light went dark, while the counter stopped with sixteen seconds remaining. “Consider them a last resort. Your ‘nuclear option,’ so to speak.”

OO5 reached out to thumb along the rubber lip that lined the chassis of the goggles Q had been showcasing a moment before. He held them up to his face and wrinkled his nose as he peered through the lenses, swiveling his head this way and that. “Quite the spread you’ve prepared for us, Quartermaster.”

“Yes, well,” Q smiled, close-mouthed, “we do aim to please.” He turned around and retrieved his customary Scrabble mug from the abysmally cluttered workstation at his back, ducking his head for a sip as he circled the table to join them around front. “We’ll have to test the fit before you go, of course.”

“Test the fit,” OO5 echoed, letting his hands drop to his waist, goggles and all. “I take it that means you want us to, uh - ” He trailed off and flushed a rosy pink that highlighted the band of freckles across the bridge of his nose.

Christ. Bond very nearly rolled his eyes. He settled, instead, for reaching out to clap a condescending palm over OO5’s shoulder and give it a little shake. “Not to worry,” he assured, adopting the unctuous drawl he liked to employ when dealing with high-rollers in illicit gambling dens. “Heart rate and dietary restrictions to the contrary, I assure you our quartermaster isn’t so much a monster that he would demand we turn tail in public.”

Q cut Bond a dark look and skimmed his tongue over his top row of teeth, mouth closed, as if he were suddenly self-conscious of the fangs they all knew were there, innocently interrupting his otherwise human dental configuration. Bond grinned at him past OO5’s shoulder.

“R has very kindly offered up her office for you, OO5.” Q beckoned the attention of a tall woman overseeing the line of late-night programmers and she made her way over, tucking a tablet in a thick rubber case into the curve of her elbow.

The quartermaster’s second in command was of a height with Bond himself, and wearing a pair of impressive pumps to boot, which put her at a good six feet, if not taller. She had her dark hair pulled into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck and her friendly smile was painted bright, fuschia pink where it curled below a pair of clear acetate glasses in a flattering cat’s eye shape.

“Gentlemen,” she greeted with a nod, and then turned her attention to Q. “I take it we’re all ready to play dress-up, then?”

“Quite,” Q said into his tea.

“Very well.” R gathered up one apiece of every item excepting the goggles, which OO5 already had in hand, then tilted her chin toward the bay doors at the front of the room. “If you’ll come with me, Agent Lamb, my office is just a floor above. It’s a sight cozier than R&D, I assure you.”

OO5 fell obediently into step at R’s side, swinging the eyewear by its strap as he offered a bland observation about how much she must enjoy her employment.

Q watched them go, the slightly stiff cadence of uncomfortable but well-meaning workplace conversation fading as they disappeared toward the lifts, and then turned to arch an expectant eyebrow at Bond.

“What?” Bond asked, mirroring the expression. “Did you want me to drop trou right here?”

Q considered him for a long second, eyes narrow and thoughtful. “I ought to make you, as turnabout for that vampire jibe, but I fear you would enjoy it too much for the lesson to stick.”

“I do put on an exceptional performance,” Bond agreed, gruff with amusement.

“Yes, OO7, your unrepentant exhibitionist streak has been very thoroughly documented.” Q turned on his heel and made for one of the arched off-shoots of the main lab, where a sturdy steel door was set into the brickwork. “Right this way, if you please,” he invited, curling two fingers at Bond over his shoulder. “And don’t forget your equipment.”

Bond stared after him for a moment, caught halfway between a laugh and a snarl, which seemed to be his default state whenever the quartermaster turned all that luminous focus with its deceptively sharp edge in Bond’s direction. He huffed a breath that was neither one nor the other and gathered all the gear up into his arms in a sloppy pile. He followed after Q at a leisurely stroll and pulled up at the other man’s shoulder just as the sensor next to the doorframe recognized Q’s handprint and flashed green.

The heavy latch unhitched with a muted metallic thunk and Q pulled the door open, ushering Bond through with his mug. Bond had been in the combustion laboratory more than once, and he could grudgingly admit that it rather admirably suited their purposes. It was a large room, with vaulted ceilings that boasted a series of attractive, arching crossbeams soaring some thirty feet overhead. It was temperature controlled, largely uncluttered—in comparison to most of the other regularly occupied workrooms in the Technical Services Section—and, most importantly, windowless and soundproofed. 

The rear third of the lab had been turned into something of an indoor sand pit and walled off with polycarbonate, several inches thick. Its transparent surface was so rife with nicks and scrapes from years of controlled detonations that looking through it gave the impression one was blanketed by a thin screen of fog. The whole space reeked of ammonia and sulphur and nitrates, the faintly phosphoric tang of propellant.

Bond wrinkled his nose and deposited his equipment in a haphazard jumble on the empty worktable nearest the door. There were eight of them, all waist-height steel, arranged in two rows running the length of the room from just a few feet off the polycarbonate wall to the brick at the other end. A couple of climate controlled explosives magazines nested in the corner, next to a ventilated cabinet lined with glittering test tube racks and neatly labeled jars and boxes, all no doubt full of substances that could be rendered highly combustible in combination if they weren’t already on their own.

Q stepped in and let the door float shut behind him on the low hiss of hydraulic springs. He paused just past the threshold and turned to where another touchpad was embedded in the brickwork next to the jamb. The screen flared to life under his nimble fingers, flickered blue, then red, then blue again and dimmed once more as he swept his hand up with a flourish. He meandered over to hover at Bond’s side and kept his nose tucked firmly into his mug until the latch had engaged behind them.

Once they were safely ensconced, Q made a small, pleased sound in the back of his throat and drew his mug toward his chest, both hands curled protectively around it. “There now,” he said. “Short of M himself coming down to input a manual override code, we shan’t be interrupted.” 

Bond hummed his acknowledgement and turned to look at Q, gazing lazily down the whole, wiry length of the quartermaster’s frame. Q was wearing a sweater that appeared to have been sewn together out of the component parts belonging to several others, all in various patterns of red, yellow, and brown, with the crisp white collar of a dress shirt poking out over the top. His well-polished wingtips, warm tobacco leather with inexcusably bright red lacing, were half lost beneath the slightly too long hems of his dark olive corduroys, wrinkled where their cuffs had come unrolled sometime during the last hour or two he’d spent stalking his department in preparation for this last-minute assignment.

It was not, all in all, the most disastrous ensemble Bond had ever seen the quartermaster wearing, but he took a moment to mourn for the death of his dignity upon recognizing the severity of his desire to peel the offending articles off and lick every inch of marble pale skin he discovered tucked away underneath. He heaved a sigh through his nose and dragged his eyes back up to where Q was peering over at him from beneath his long lashes, one brow arched and his soft red mouth curled up on one side in a smug smirk.

“You didn’t wake me when you left,” Bond said, low and pointed.

Q ducked his head, smirk widening into a smile so broad it showed his teeth as he turned his attention from Bond to the awkward pile of equipment disarrayed across the table in front of them. “I thought you could use the sleep,” he replied, setting his mug aside and busying himself with rearranging everything to his own satisfaction. “You were ridden rather hard and put away wet, if memory serves.”

“I could have given _you_ a ride, if you’d bothered with a proper goodbye.”

Q clicked his tongue, admonishing, and flashed Bond a scandalized look out of the corner of his eye. “Then we both would’ve been late.”

Bond snorted before he could help himself, shaking his head and leaning his hands onto the table, shifting his weight just enough to press his shoulder against Q’s where the latter was still fussing with the vest. “You might have at least warned me there was a summons incoming.”

“It would be unseemly to play favorites,” Q said, turning his nose up at the suggestion. His prim delivery was significantly undercut by the way he leaned into the heat of Bond’s body, eyes glinting with mischief. “Now,” he continued, close enough that Bond could feel the word, sweet and humid where it unfurled against his cheek. Q set his teeth to the lush cushion of his lower lip, the needle points of his fangs bright like pearls against his berry-bitten skin for a split second before he instructed in a low purr, “Strip.”

“Talk about unseemly,” Bond drawled. “What would your minions think—their precious quartermaster luring unsuspecting double-oh agents into deserted labs and demanding they undress?”

“I imagine it would be an overwhelming relief to at least one of them. I gather there’s quite a tidy sum riding on our eventual copulation.”

Bond imagined the quartermaster as he had been just a few short hours prior—backlit by a silvery screen of moonlight as he straddled Bond’s thighs and writhed like a wild thing in pursuit of his own pleasure—and hummed with poorly concealed amusement. “In that case, perhaps I ought to to make you work a little harder to get me out of my clothes. I’d hate to undersell.”

Q rolled his eyes and leaned in even closer to give Bond’s tie a fond, gentle tug. “This is hardly the moment to get precious about your modesty, OO7. The sooner you’re out of one kit, the sooner we can get you into the other.” He smoothed the strip of silk back into place, fingers skimming Bond’s chest, then straightened up to retrieve his tea and put a little space between them. “I need time to make adjustments, unless you’d prefer to be dropped into hostile territory with a vest that pinches under the arms.”

“I thought you kept our measurements on file.”

“Everything from inseam to dental impressions, for both your forms,” Q confirmed. “And we fabricate equipment accordingly, as you well know, but there’s always a margin of error that simply cannot be corrected without a proper field test. Considering the high level of risk involved in this operation, I thought it prudent to be thorough.”

Bond reached up to dig his finger into the four-in-hand knot keeping his tie taut around his throat and loosened it until he could pull the tails free, tossing the garment onto the table in a slippery coil of steel blue silk. He shrugged out of his jacket and added it to the pile, then undid his shirt cuffs and started in on the buttons. It was only after he’d bared his sternum that he arched an eyebrow at Q and hazarded, “I take it you’re sticking around for the show?”

The quartermaster wasn’t even pretending not to watch. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, raising his gaze from the golden wedge of skin peeking past the undone placket of Bond’s shirt to offer a coy, unapologetic smile over the lip of his mug. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.” He considered for a moment and then put his head to one side, schooling his expression back to professional diffidence. “I can leave, if you’d rather. I understand that shifting can be an intimate experience and you’re under no obligation to share it with me.”

“Why, Q,” Bond drawled, shrugging free of his shirt and laying it out over top of his jacket. “I hadn’t pegged you for a romantic.”

“I’ll take care to lay out some rose petals next time. Light a candle or two.”

Bond chuckled under his breath and made quick work of his shoes and socks. He undid the button at his fly and shimmied out of his trousers, then stripped his pants down his thighs and stepped free of them with as much grace as he could muster, folding it all haphazardly and tossing it onto the table with the rest of his outfit. He turned to face Q when he was finished, hip cocked, and stretched his arms briefly above his head, putting himself on display in the way that never failed to flood the quartermaster’s face with heat, despite his lack of a proper pulse.

Q skimmed his stormy gaze down Bond’s body and back up again, the roses in his cheeks blossoming brighter still. “If you’re quite finished parading around, OO7, we have rather more important assets to inspect,” he said, with a pointed tilt of his head, though there was no disguising the glossy sheen to his eyes or the darting flicker of pink as he wet his lower lip.

Bond smirked and padded over to the aisle between the tables. He rolled his shoulders back, grimacing when the joints popped, then tossed his neck to both sides to facilitate the same. He closed his eyes and stood there for a second, in the pleasantly cool air, reaching for the fevered pit at the core of his being where the bestial parts of him simmered, deep beneath the surface of his human skin.

When he looked up again, he noted the way that Q’s breath caught, mouth parted around a soft noise that Bond couldn’t quite classify. The quartermaster’s eyes were wide behind his glasses, no doubt because the blood fever of the wolf in Bond’s belly was already starting to leach the blue out of his own, leaving the familiar glow of lupine yellow in its wake.

“This won’t be pretty,” Bond warned.

“Shame that I’m only in it for your good looks, then.”

Bond laughed outright, a short bark of sound, and then ducked his head and gave over to the embers prickling just below the surface of his skin.

It was never pleasant, shifting, but there was something cathartic about the process, like the release of pressure after digging a finger into a fresh bruise. There was a nostalgic comfort to the sensation as well, considering that Bond had been toddling around on four feet well before he could confidently maneuver on two. That familiar anticipation dulled the itch under his skin, soothed the ache in his joints, and kept the pain on the bearable side of agonizing while his body twisted and snapped and reformed around him.

A few short minutes later, Bond was on all fours in the middle of the room, panting through the last, lingering aftershocks of pain as his bones settled and his muscles twitched, still soaked through with the adrenaline that had flooded his system during the shift.

“Gorgeous,” Q breathed behind him, and Bond turned.

His eyesight was somewhat compromised in this form, most colors beyond blues and yellows reduced to muddy shades of grey—which, unfortunately, meant that the majority of Q’s sweater was still rendered in garish relief. The whole world was a riot of scent, being the main source of ambient information available to those of the canine persuasion. Bond took a few deep, whuffling breaths as he sorted through it all.

There was the background stink of various chemicals and the deeply entrenched reek of burning material components. There was Bond’s own animal odor, still shot through with the sharp tang of pain, and the subtle, spiced cologne he favored, clinging to his suit where it was piled on the table. There was also the quartermaster, his overripe sweetness punched up even brighter and stronger to Bond’s sensitive nose. It was not entirely unlike the saccharine allspice of natural rot, wafting up from the forest floor when you kicked back a fresh carpet of leaves to uncover the layer that had fallen weeks before, dissolving into the loam. Bond wondered selfishly what it might take to bottle it. Through sheer force of willpower, he managed to turn the sudden, intense desire to chase after the scent where it pooled between the quartermaster’s thighs into a regal shake of his head rather than a barely restrained lunge.

The quartermaster, for his part, was staring at Bond, wide-eyed with something Bond was reluctant to identify as awe, mouth open around a grin that showed his fangs. He set his mug on the table without looking, groping through the air a couple of times before he managed to get it settled securely, and took a halting step in Bond’s direction.

“May I?” he asked, extending a hand cautiously in front of him. He was a good seven feet off from Bond yet, but Bond appreciated the consideration.

He huffed a low, approving breath and took a step forward. Slow, so as not to spook Q unnecessarily. Willingness aside, it was a simple matter of instinct to react when a predator of Bond’s size approached, and he didn’t want to risk triggering any of the quartermaster’s own animal defenses.

It turned out he needn’t have worried. The moment he made his welcome known, Q rushed to close the distance between them, crossing the floor in a few swift strides. He blanched when he was just in front of Bond, hand hovering close enough to touch, gaze darting from Bond’s face to his flank to his ears, like he wasn’t sure where to start. Bond made the decision for him, nosing Q’s palm up toward his head.

Q huffed a laugh and stroked his knuckles up the bridge of Bond’s nose toward his crown, detouring to brush the pads of his fingers across Bond’s brow bone. Bond turned his head, guiding Q’s attention to the sensitive divot at the base of his ear. Q gave it an obliging scratch and then followed it up to the velvet point at the top. He ghosted his thumb over the soft skin of the inside and made a low noise of apology when Bond whined in warning and swiveled his head away.

“You are a big, beautiful beast, aren’t you?” Q said, fond and appraising as he returned his hand to Bond’s furry cheek. His smile curled a little sharper. “And quite a handsome wolf, as it turns out.”

Bond flicked his ears in amusement, tail thudding once, hard, against the floor. He nudged at Q’s arm and the other man laughed again and returned to lavishing attention upon Bond’s ears, his chin, the thick ruff at his neck. Q kept at it long enough that Bond managed to inch closer, shifting to one side and leaning his weight against Q’s legs. Bond had let his eyes slip shut and was drifting on wave after shallow wave of endorphins as they rolled out from the delicate patterns Q was tracing absently against his pelt when the quartermaster sighed, apologetic, and said, “We’d better get moving. M wants you in the air by 0300.”

He gave Bond a little, encouraging shove and Bond heaved himself up, allowing Q to guide him toward the table with a hand on his back. He loped forward on all fours, claws scraping against the sealed concrete flooring. While bipedal ambulation was technically possible in his current state, it was awkward and unflattering, which Bond would take great pains to avoid inflicting on his carefully curated reputation as a man of skill and grace.

“We’ll start here,” Q announced, gathering the vest into his arms. He wheeled around and looked expectantly at Bond, who was sitting just behind him. “Hold still for me.”

Bond sighed through his nose but obeyed, ducking his head a little to make it easier for Q drop the vest over top. It was, indeed, lighter than the kevlar body armor Bond had worn in the past, and a good deal softer. The fine mesh weave didn’t even pull at his fur. He sat patiently while Q dug the bandolier of explosives free from the pile and settled it over Bond’s shoulder like a sash. There was a snap hook at either end that clipped into a corresponding series of d-rings on the vest to hold it in place. 

Once the bandolier had been fastened to his satisfaction, Q tugged on the hem at the front of the vest until it was laying straight and hummed to himself, brow furrowed. He tapped at Bond’s bicep without looking up and instructed, “Stand up, would you? Arms out to your sides.”

Bond sat back on his haunches and pushed up to his feet, holding his arms just far enough away from his body to allow the quartermaster to get at the straps on the sides of the vest. He pulled them forward, buckling them around the front, and gave them a quick, testing yank to ensure they would hold. He fussed with them for another minute or two, tightening and pulling and tightening again, and then said briskly, “There we are. How does she feel?”

In his usual state, Bond and the quartermaster were nearly of a height, but as a wolf he gained several inches, so Q had to tilt his head up to meet his eye. Bond decided that he liked it, and made a note to take proper advantage of the differential sometime when there wasn’t a compromised agent awaiting their intervention.

He dropped back down onto four feet and took a few steps, letting the vest settle into position, then launched into an easy jog around the perimeter of the room, paying careful attention to the shift and rustle of the fabric as he moved. He returned to the quartermaster in short order, satisfied with the fit and willing to concede that Q Branch had, indeed, designed an article of projectile resistant armor that was a cut above the rest.

“All right?” Q asked, when Bond drew up before him.

Bond wasn’t built to nod at the moment, so he settled for a wag of his tail. This appeared to be affirmation enough for Q, who smiled and chirped, “Excellent,” before turning to retrieve another piece of equipment. This time, the goggles, which Bond resigned himself to wearing for precisely the amount of time it took to guarantee their functionality and not a second longer.

He lowered his head, as he had before, though he couldn’t quite banish the unhappy stiffness from his posture. Q, perhaps reading into this, stroked a hand down the side of Bond’s neck before placing the goggles over his eyes with more care than the act required. He slipped the nylon strap underneath Bond’s chin, and then circled around behind him to do up the buckle at the back of his head.

“There we are,” Q announced brightly. He came back to Bond’s front and reached up to adjust the goggles just so, until every inch of the rubber lining the chassis was pressed to Bond’s face, with not a gap to be found. The world had gone fully greyscale, courtesy the specialized tint, but it was easy enough to see through the much-lauded eyewear even so. There was some very slight warping at the edges of Bond’s vision, but everything else remained as crisp and clear as if he weren’t wearing the goggles at all. Q, for example, was standing close enough that Bond could make out the handful of freckles dotting his wintry complexion, and the spiked fan of his eyelashes where he was peering curiously into the mirrored surface of the lenses.

“Fit looks good,” the quartermaster assessed, leaning his face this way and that. He reached up to nudge at Bond’s chin and coaxed him into lifting his head so he could get a better view of where the straps circled around the back of Bond’s skull. “Nothing pinching or rubbing?”

Bond, who lacked the relevant vocal capabilities to provide verbal confirmation, stared at him until Q huffed a soft, sheepish laugh and said ruefully, “I’ll take your pointed lack of response as a negative.” He turned around just far enough to reach the earmuffs and held them up. “These next.”

They went on just as easily as the goggles, though the amount of straps in place around Bond’s head and face proved to be more irritating than he had anticipated. Q instructed him to take another jaunt around the room and Bond did, though not before flashing a dark look at the quartermaster over his shoulder. Both pieces of equipment itched a bit, where they flattened Bond’s fur, but they stayed in place well enough, even when he braced all four limbs against the floor and shook himself from top to tail like a dog just in out of an unexpected downpour.

“Wonderful,” Q enthused, removing them both with the same tender efficiency he had employed while putting them on, before relegating them to the table once more. When he turned back to Bond, he had the modified straight key looped over his middle finger. The silicone band was loose enough around the slender digit that it hung down a little way over his palm.

Q beckoned for Bond’s left arm. Bond raised it up between them, and the quartermaster took Bond’s hand in his own without hesitation. It was at once the most and least human part of him, in this form, physiology caught somewhere between a proper hand and a dog’s forepaw. He flexed his fingers to avoid catching the quartermaster with his claws, where they curled long and dark and vicious from the end of each digit.

“Small blessing that you retain at least some limited use of your opposable thumbs,” Q commented, working the band past the knuckles of Bond’s index finger to settle it as near to his palm as possible. “We would’ve had a hell of a time with this, otherwise.” He twisted the ring so the button was situated along the side of Bond’s finger and then let him go with a little nod. “Give that a try. You should be able to feel the button depress.”

Bond squeezed the pad of his thumb against the button and wagged his tail in a swift, back and forth affirmative when he felt it give under the pressure.

“Perfect,” Q grinned. “Last one.”

He held up the collar, eyebrows raised in expectant arcs over the tops of his glasses, and didn’t even flinch when Bond made a warning noise low in his throat. A deep, lupine rumble that would have turned a lesser man’s knees to water underneath him.

“Yes, OO7, you’ve made your disapproval abundantly clear.” The quartermaster advanced toward Bond with the collar held out in front of him, slow but purposeful.

Bond leaned away and twisted his head to the side when Q made to sling it around his neck. He fixed the quartermaster with a gimlet eye and curled his top lip up over his teeth in a silent snarl.

Q huffed a harassed breath through his nose and said lowly, “I promise that I shall endeavor to come up with a more palatable alternative in anticipation of any future missions requiring yourself or any other agent to be sent into the field under shift, but we’re on a truncated timeline at present. Agent Mathis is waiting for you, hopefully still alive and suffering only minimal damage. The longer we faff about, the narrower her margin of survival becomes.”

Bond rolled his gaze toward the ceiling and released a sigh so heavy it dropped out of him like a brick. He glared in Q’s direction but lowered his head and grudgingly allowed the quartermaster to buckle the collar into place.

“That’s the spirit,” Q praised, dry and polite. He patted at Bond’s chest, as if to punctuate his point, and tucked his fingers under the leather strap, sliding them around to test the fit. He made a quiet noise of approval in the back of his throat and brought his hands up to either side of Bond’s face, trailing his fingers tenderly through the short, soft fur on his cheeks. “One more circuit of the room and we’ll have you out of the hateful thing, and on to more important business.”

Bond sighed, sharp and sullen, and pressed his face forward into the welcome attention of Q’s hands. 

The quartermaster’s mouth twisted with amusement, pale eyes dancing as he gave his head a fond shake. He treated Bond’s cheek to another sweet, soft caress and then stepped back, gaze sharpening. “For a start,” he said, calm and casual, “you can explain to me why, exactly, you felt the need to interrogate Miss Moneypenny about my beverage preferences.”

Bond stood, his entire body stiffening at the accusation. He flashed Q a wary glance over his shoulder, and the quartermaster chuckled under his breath, swatting gently at Bond’s flank with the back of his hand.

“Get a move on, agent,” he instructed, tone warm but firm.

Bond looked at him for another moment and then complied. The collar was about as comfortable as could be expected of a Q Branch innovation, sitting firmly in place despite Bond’s brisk, careless pace, the leather supple enough that it didn’t catch or rub. Bond still didn’t like it. He had become accustomed to the fitted neckline of a well-tailored shirt and the subtle presence of a tie while wearing his human skin, but only after years of exposure. He was far more sensitive to pressure against his throat as a wolf. He would have refused to accommodate it, even now, had the stakes of his current mission been slightly lower or the quartermaster any less adamant as to the collar’s necessity.

Bond stepped into Q’s space when he was finished, tilting his head up and to the side to expose the buckle where it hung to the right of his throat. When Q didn’t move to undo it fast enough, he tossed his head and shuffled in even closer, shoulder bumping Q’s chest with enough force to knock him slightly off balance.

“Okay!” Q laughed, stumbling to get his feet back under him. “All right! I’ll get it off, just - hold still for a second.” His nimble fingers made quick work of the offending garment, and Bond sighed with relief as the tail of the collar slithered free of the buckle, his breath stirring the dark curls at Q’s temple where his head was bowed for a better view. Q tossed the collar onto the table behind him and scratched in quick, soothing strokes through the ruff around Bond’s neck where the fur had been mussed. “There you are, you great fussy brute. Freed from your confines at last.”

Bond lolled against him with a lazy yawn of relief, tail sweeping the floor where he settled back onto his haunches to lean his weight more fully into Q’s whipcord frame.

“Honestly,” Q muttered, submitting to his fate as an unwilling buttress with a shallow roll of his eyes, though Bond could hear the open affection in his tone, “you’d think I took the thumbscrews to you, the way you carry on.”

Bond huffed a protest and Q clicked his tongue.

“You absolutely do,” he insisted. “You and all the rest of the double-ohs, whenever you don’t get your way. Worse than Shakespeare night at the am-drams, the lot of you.” He curled his fingers under the shoulder strap of the vest Bond was still wearing and gave it a little tug. “Let me get the rest of this off, and you can pop back onto two legs. No doubt you’ve a backlog of pointed commentary you’re dying to share.”

He undid the bandolier and the vest, and removed the straight key finger button with the same swift competency, leaving Bond to meander back out into the open aisle and attempt to wrest the man out from under the wolf. It was harder, this way around, without the waning of the moon to catapult him beyond the grasp of his more primal instincts, though at least Bond had been raised to understand that his nature rendered him neither individually man nor individually beast, so much as a single conglomerate entity comprised of both facets and more besides. 

He coaxed himself slowly toward the shift, sinking into the disant heat of it like one might a warm bath, until he was fully submerged and the aching inferno of change roared to a boil all around him.

The first thing he noticed when he was able to string a coherent thought together again was that he was sweating. The second was the weight of the quartermaster’s gaze on his bare back, impossible to ignore but not at all unwelcome. Bond cocked his jaw to one side, then the other, in the hopes that the joint might pop and relieve some of the itch where his fangs had retracted to make room for his politely blunted human teeth. He flexed his fingers against the concrete, then his toes, and rolled his shoulders a couple of times for good measure before he pushed himself to standing.

When he turned around, Q was leaning against the worktable, proffering Bond’s pants. Bond reached out to snatch them where they were hanging by the hem from the quartermaster’s crooked index finger with a grateful duck of his head. He stepped into them and tugged the black cotton up, adjusting himself for perhaps a second or two longer than was strictly necessary before he strolled over to stand in front of Q in a mirror of his lazy posture.

“Well?” the quartermaster intoned, one expectant eyebrow arched.

“Well, what?”

“I believe, at this point in the proceedings, you’re contractually obligated to lodge at least one complaint.”

Bond shrugged and shook his head, turning to glance at the equipment, which was once more neatly assembled against the silvered backdrop of the worktable’s brushed steel surface. “Sorry to disappoint, but everything appears to be in order.” He smirked, crossing one arm over his chest and reaching out with the other to trace a finger along the hem of the bandolier. “I think one of these little beauties will suit me far better than an exploding pen, given the circumstances.”

Q narrowed his eyes.

“What?” Bond asked, mouth curling.

“You’re being suspiciously agreeable.”

“And you, needlessly paranoid.”

“We work in international espionage,” Q scoffed. “I would hardly call it ‘needless.’” He gathered up the rest of Bond’s clothes and shoved them at him without ceremony, leaning in so that the little bundle of luxury fabric was the only thing between them aside from an inch or two of crackling air. “Get dressed, would you? I’d hate for someone on the digital security team to review the camera footage and get the wrong idea.”

His voice was low and sly. Bond made sure to let their hands brush in retaliation as he accepted the armful of slightly crumpled menswear and obligingly went about redressing himself—trousers, shirt, socks, and jacket, all tugged smartly back into place with brisk efficiency.

He was just pulling his tie in a loop under his collar when the quartermaster, who was still hovering a foot or so away with his weight leaned back against the worktable, put his head to one side and said benignly, “While you’re making yourself presentable, why don’t you tell me what on Earth compelled you to ask Moneypenny of all people about how I like my blood?”

Bond sighed as he flipped his collar down, running his thumb around the back to make sure it wasn’t curled under or still sticking up anywhere. He ducked his head to watch his own hands move as he knotted the strip of fabric with practiced ease and shrugged, “I was curious.”

“About what sort of blood I like or about what confidences Miss Moneypenny and I have seen fit to share?”

Bond considered this. “Perhaps,” he admitted, “a little of both.” He flashed the quartermaster a rueful smirk. “It was not my proudest moment.”

“No, I shouldn’t think it was,” Q agreed, but he was smiling. He leaned over and reached along the table for his mug, elbow skimming Bond’s side. He straightened back up with his beverage in hand—by now undoubtedly stone cold—and studied Bond over the top of his glass, while his thumb beat a thoughtful, arrhythmic tattoo against the ceramic. After a long second, he asked, sweet and simple, “Why?”

“I imagine that should be obvious,” Bond said, deliberately misunderstanding.

Q rolled his eyes. “I know why it was embarrassing. Moneypenny won’t have been kind about putting you in your place, though God knows the threat of public ridicule has never stayed your hand before.” He lifted his chin. “Why do you want to know?”

Bond straightened his tie and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets before squaring up to face the quartermaster head on. “That is what two people in a relationship do, isn’t it? Trade intimacies. Make themselves vulnerable for one another.”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Q quipped, amusement pulling shadows at the corners of his smirk.

Bond pursed his mouth against a laugh. “Just so.”

The quartermaster considered him for a moment longer, and then asked softly, “Is that what we are? Two people in a relationship?”

“I believe that’s up to you,” Bond said, with a candidness that surprised even himself, “seeing as I’ve just put every inch of ‘mine’ rather thoroughly on display.”

Q hummed and took a sip of his tea, not even blinking at the temperature. “I suppose you have,” he conceded, after a moment of silent contemplation. “Though I’m not convinced an intimacy forced by circumstances beyond either of our control bears the same significance as a confidence freely offered.”

“Consider it an apéritif,” Bond suggested, and took a lazy, leaning step into Q’s space, potential discovery by anonymous digital security overseers be damned. He reached out to curl a hand over the quartermaster’s hip, stroking his thumb up under the hem of his awful sweater in an absent, possessive arc. “A little something to whet your appetite, such as it is.”

Q looked up at him, and made a long, slow show of chasing the lingering Earl Grey off his lower lip with a swift pink sweep of his tongue.

“You’re very keen on this idea,” he commented, with a decided note of disapproval. His shoulders tightened, lifting ever so slightly toward his ears. “Do you understand what it is, precisely, that you’re offering?”

Bond smirked, eyes narrow with humor. “A nightcap,” he supplied, and then added wryly, “after a fashion.” He let his gaze flicker down to Q’s mouth and hover there for a second before he sighed through his nose and dragged his attention back up to find the quartermaster looking severely unimpressed by his comedic stylings. Bond schooled his expression to something more sober as he clarified, “I’m offering to expose a vulnerability I think we may both enjoy exploiting.”

Q snorted, eyes sparkling, but there was a dark edge of menace under his light tone as he warned, “If you’re expecting it to be all fun and games, I’m afraid you’ve been watching far too much biter porn. Do you know how long it takes to bleed out from an unattended wound to the jugular vein?”

Bond opened his mouth to provide an appropriately pithy response referencing the mandatory training in basic field medicine he’d undergone during his tenure with the Royal Navy, but Q cut him off.

“Five minutes,” he supplied, brisk but casual, like he was reprimanding a tiresome junior agent in the middle of any standard agency debriefing, “at an optimistic maximum. Sever the carotid, and you’re looking at potential seconds. Even werewolves don’t heal fast enough to repair that kind of damage.”

“It would be a poor show of trust if there weren’t some level of risk involved.”

Q laughed—a sharp, startled sound he choked into submission the moment it burst forth—and unfolded his arm from across his chest so he could reach up to pinch at the bridge of his nose, glasses bobbing up over his eyebrows where his knuckles nudged them. He shook his head and looked away as he set his mug safely on the table, shifting around to lean his hips back against it and curling his fingers over the lip. The motion jostled Bond’s hand where it rested at the quartermaster’s waist, but Q didn’t swat him away or shake him off when he resettled it into place once more.

“James,” he sighed, thin and exasperated, sea storm eyes fixed on Bond’s with an intensity that made heat bloom all up the back of Bond’s throat. “It’s been more than six months since the last time you went dark on me in the field. I stitch you up every time you can’t be bothered to stop by Medical on your way home to let the professionals tend to the new and exotic injuries you’ve collected on your travels. You gave me a key to your bloody flat!” He sounded confused and almost petulant, brow furrowed despite the way his mouth curled up at the corners when he insisted helplessly, “I _know_ you trust me.”

“Then you know why I’m not worried.”

Q scoffed and shook his head, smile pulling into a taut, bitter arc as he cut his gaze away and brought his arms up to curl protectively over his chest. He stared at the wall for a long moment, jaw working, until Bond stepped in a little further, slotting his feet between Q’s like teeth in a zipper.

“You _should_ worry,” Q muttered, turning to face Bond once more, though he kept his eyes fixed firmly on the knot in Bond’s tie. He reached out with one hand to fiddle with the lapel of Bond’s jacket, sliding his fingers along the sharkskin wool. “There’s a reason the government saw fit to implement strict regulations governing the consumption of living blood. It’s dangerous.”

 _I’m dangerous,_ he didn’t say, though Bond heard it anyway.

It was a fair admonition, though likewise slightly absurd, considering that Bond himself routinely manifested both the physical attributes necessary to disembowel a man with very little effort and the instincts to make it seem like a perfectly reasonable course of action to follow. 

“Bollocks to the regulations,” he said cheerfully, and ceded his grip on the quartermaster’s hip in favor of hooking two fingers through his belt loop. 

“James - ” Q frowned and lifted his head. His gaze had gone sharp under his furrowed brow, the way it always did when he was gearing up to deliver a particularly scathing rebuke.

Bond cut him off with a quick shake of his head, tugging at Q’s trousers with enough force to make the other man sway a few precious centimeters up off the table. He was well aware of the laws, of the regulations and the restrictions and the registries. They were kinder to wolves, but not by much, and Bond only respected them so far as public decency required. What a couple of consenting individuals got up to in the privacy of their own residence was another matter entirely.

Bond angled his head to one side, almost like he was leaning in for a kiss, and kept his voice calm and metered as he asked, “Tell me, darling, when was the last time you allowed yourself a drink? A _proper_ drink, not just a fleeting taste on the rare occasion you forget your fangs in the bedroom, or the canned swill the CEBC puts out?”

Q’s mouth dropped open around a soft, sticky sound while a flare of pink bloomed across the bridge of his nose and flooded the aristocratic planes of his cheeks. He licked his lips and swallowed hard. Bond watched the fragile constriction of his throat, drawn to the motion by a deep, predatory hunger, and reached up with his free hand to trace the length of the pale column with the callused pad of his thumb.

“It’s been awhile,” Q demurred in a hoarse whisper.

Bond hummed, trailing his finger up and back down in search of a pulse he knew he wasn’t going to find. The quartermaster’s heart beat, as every vampire’s did, but it would be too slow and faint to pick up on without an influx of living blood to speed its tempo.

“Before or after they passed Vulpe-Mayhew?” Bond pressed.

The Vulpe-Mayhew ruling—which had restricted vampires’ rights to feed and eventually led to the establishment of the Council for Ethical Blood Consumption as a joint venture of the Department of Health and Social Care and the Food Standards Agency—had been passed in 1824. Bond didn’t know how old Q was or when he’d been turned, though he would bet on it being a hundred or so years ago at least. Siring new vampires had fallen out of fashion somewhat in the middle of the eighteenth century, when the world was beginning to feel small, and nowadays it was prohibited without approval from both the living party’s government and the Court of Nine—a democratically selected council of elder vampires who consulted on exsanguine affairs of all stripes. 

It had never occurred to Bond to ask after the quartermaster’s provenance, and more to the point, he didn’t particularly care. What mattered was that two of them were existing here and now, together, and would continue to do so until time, luck, or some enterprising criminal with a silver bullet in the chamber finally caught up with Bond on a bad day.

“Before,” Q admitted, with a keening edge like it pained him.

Bond did a quick calculation in his head and brushed his knuckles against Q’s jaw, cupping his palm around Q’s cheek when he tilted his head.

“Quite the impressive dry spell,” Bond said, low and warm. “I think you’re well overdue for a little indulgence after nearly two centuries, don’t you?”

The quartermaster glared at him.

“You are willful,” he muttered, hot with irritation. “Prideful.” He twisted his fists in Bond’s jacket and yanked him in so close that their noses brushed. “And entirely without shame.” With that, he tilted his face up, closed his eyes, and sealed their mouths together.

The kiss was soft and slick and Bond opened to it eagerly. He wrapped his free arm around the quartermaster’s waist and held him close, savoring the way Q pushed up onto his toes and the choked sound of pleasure that caught in his throat when Bond curled his tongue just so. They didn’t linger long, mouths working for a few brief, tantalizing seconds before Q wrested himself back under control and shifted just far enough away to breathe, forehead nudging Bond’s as he panted against his cheek, face flushed and eyes still shut.

“So much for the security footage,” Bond rumbled, and the quartermaster laughed, light and breathless and wholly unbothered, for all his earlier teasing on the topic.

“I suppose somebody was bound to collect on the pool eventually.” He straightened up and smoothed Bond’s lapels back into place, brushing his fingers absently over Bond’s chest a few times before he shook his head and fixed Bond with a smirk. “That wasn’t a yes,” he said, his palm a cool, steady pressure over Bond’s heart.

“If it was a no, it was awfully tawdry.”

The quartermaster hummed, noncommittal, and shuffled to the side, out of Bond’s grasp. He collected his mug and then turned and gestured in the direction of the heavy steel door.

“You’re due up in Medical,” he instructed, guiding Bond forward with a gentle press of his hand to the small of Bond’s back. Bond cut him a look, eyebrow arched, but the quartermaster didn’t so much as blink. “They want to establish baseline measures and give you a few last minute vaccinations. Q Branch will run a final test on your gear to ensure that everything is in proper working order and we’ll have a kit packed for you within the hour. No tickets or reservations, as you’ll be traveling via private aircraft both ways. Our projected timetable puts you back in London around 1800 hours this evening. In and out.”

Bond snorted, and settled in at the quartermaster’s shoulder as he sidled up to the touchscreen panel next to the door. “How delightfully optimistic of you.”

“I have personally calculated the statistical probability for the many, many ways in which this assignment could go wrong,” Q said primly, tapping commands out on the screen faster than Bond could read them. He glanced over and fixed Bond with a pointed look, eyebrows quirked. “We’ve had to introduce a variable to the equation to adjust for the higher than average percentile possibility of unexpected deviations based solely on your involvement.”

Bond grinned, wide and smug. “Good to know Q Branch is finally learning to anticipate my methods.”

“What we’re learning to anticipate is a heretofore unseen level of property damage and personal injury,” Q corrected. “You’re almost single-handedly responsible for our war of attrition against the Finance Department.” The touchscreen blinked at him and he yanked the door open. “And I gather that International Relations has recently begun inundating M with passive aggressive queries as to your stability and field competence.”

“The Psych Department must be so relieved to finally have an ally,” Bond said brightly, and followed the quartermaster out into R&D proper with a spring in his step.

“All of which to illustrate,” Q continued, ignoring this aside, “that we need you on your best behavior. To that end, I am prepared to incentivize your cooperation in this endeavor.”

He wheeled around to face Bond, hovering in the shadowed arch of the alcove.

“Trust in your handlers,” he said, low and slow and intimate, “and do everything by the book, and I’ll invite you ‘round to mine for a drink when you get back.”

“That sounds like a ‘yes,’” Bond observed, tucking his hands into his pockets and very nearly biting his lip to keep from smiling with all his teeth. A little coal of heat simmered in his belly.

“It’s conditional,” Q warned, raising a finger to wag it in front of Bond’s nose. “To be rescinded immediately and without remorse if you put so much as a toe out of line.”

Bond reached out and caught the quartermaster’s wrist, slipping his thumb up under the sleeve of his sweater to brush over the delicate tendons. “You know,” he said, stepping in and lowering his voice to a warm murmur, “you can just admit you want a taste. No wager required.”

“Yes,” Q allowed, canting his head with a smirk, “but more fool me not to take advantage of such an opportunity when it presents itself, wouldn’t you agree?”

Bond snorted and shook his head, gaze flicking out to the side and then back again to rest on the quartermaster’s face. He was still faintly pink, mouth redder than usual where Bond had worried his lower lip between his teeth.

“How very devious of you.”

“M didn’t promote me to Senior Armourer on account of my sparkling personality.” Q tugged gently free of Bond’s grasp and Bond let him go without complaint, falling into step at the quartermaster’s shoulder as he strolled back out into the main lab.

Rather than returning to the worktable from which he normally held court, Q detoured to the row of manned computer stations and hovered for a second, peering over his peons’ shoulders. He leaned in, frowning at one of the screens, and murmured, “Check that again, would you? Output seems a bit low.”

He straightened up and meandered back out into the center of the aisle, where Bond was watching the spectacle—and the pull of the quartermaster’s corduroy trousers over his pert bottom—with an amused grin.

“Best run along,” Q instructed, crisp and expectant despite the obvious sheen of fondness glossing his gaze. “Moneypenny will have both our heads if she’s forced to come and collect you.”

“Of course,” Bond nodded. He made to step past Q, who was watching him go out of the corner of his eye, and swung an arm out at the last second. He slung it around Q’s waist, hand settling far too low to preserve any suggestion of modesty that still existed between them, and pressed a quick, possessive kiss to the corner of Q’s mouth. “Quartermaster.”

“OO7,” Q replied, cool and with a sharp edge of warning, though he didn’t pull away.

Bond gave him a squeeze and pressed on, turning when he reached the lift bay to smile, smug and unapologetic, at where Q was watching him through narrowed eyes, mouth pursed against his own amusement.

The Q Branch technicians had slowed in their typing, the few of them brave enough to risk the wrath of their superior stealing delighted glimpses between Bond and Q over their shoulders. The lift dinged behind him and Bond backed into it, pressing the key for the Medical floor without looking. He dipped his chin in a shallow nod as the doors swept closed on the quartermaster’s long, lithe form.

Bond leaned back against the wall as the car droned and lurched into motion around him, tilting his head up to gaze at the elegant row of numbers above the door, watching while they blinked to life and guttered out one by one as the lift rose. He hummed under his breath, a slightly tuneless rendition of the main melody from Milt Buckner’s ‘Red Red Wine,’ a jazzy little number circa the early 1950s. His phone chirped with an incoming message and Bond dipped a hand into his pocket, fetched it out, and thumbed the screen to life.

The missive was from Moneypenny, two short lines:

_You just won me 500 quid. Consider payment tendered._

Alone, in the privacy of the lift car, with the taste of the quartermaster still sweet on his tongue, Bond threw his head back and laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks very much for reading! 
> 
> I'm on Tumblr (@thrillingdetectivetales) and Discord (thrillingdetectivetales#5966) if you're interested in chatting, though I should warn you that the Tumblr in particular is heavily multifandom rather than specifically OOQ focused.


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